After making it halfway through music school this semester and doing everything I came to Nashville to do, I’d worked myself into the ground. I’d run out of creativity, because I’d had to expend so much energy on trying to get through the semester. I could no longer write any music, no matter how much part of me still wanted to do it.

I’ve just finished my second year of Music School in college! This year, I’ve worked harder than I ever knew I could, and I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunities that have allowed me to do so.

In the last few months, much has happened that has made clear to me that I need to focus on being a composer. I can’t only do engineering. I’m certainly still recording, producing, and spending plenty of time in the studio (and plan to keep doing so because I still love it and need to record my compositions), but I’ve realized that, first and foremost, I’m a composer.

In the wake of an exhausting freshman year, unfortunately, until a few weeks ago, I had been struggling tremendously to compose anything at all. It wasn’t that I didn’t try—I tried harder than I knew I could. But the music wouldn’t come. I hated almost everything I did manage to write. On some level, I even began to hate composing itself because it took so much effort to even write things I didn’t like.

“Music students: as the semester grinds on you may feel intensely burnt-out. You may even consider dropping out of music altogether. If that happens, go back and listen to your favorite recordings, make music with your friends, do anything you can to remind yourself why you loved music before you started studying it. An education in music can be a very good thing, but it can also squeeze the life out of any love you ever had for it. Don’t let it.”

Recently, I came across this quote by Eric Whitacre from his blog, via Facebook. The timing couldn’t have been better.

I just released some new music! I’ve recorded a solo piano song called “To the Sky” written by an artist named Dirk Maassen. It’s a lovely piece, and if you enjoy my own piano compositions, then you’ll love Dirk’s music, too. Check out more of his work here. This is my recording:

It’s official… I’ve begun working on my second piano album! I plan to record most of it over the course of this summer, and I expect to release it in early spring of 2015—perhaps sooner or later depending on how many other projects I’m doing. I’m hoping to make it longer than Airborne—hopefully around 40 or 45 minutes. As of right now, I’ve completed two compositions with another almost done, bringing me to around twenty minutes of music.

I was hoping to come home from college with enough material completed to record another album right away. And I wanted to be more active on my blog throughout the past year, release singles, produce other artists, and play more gigs, but life happened…Continue reading “Why My Next Album Can’t Live up to the Past”→

Have you ever noticed that the word “composition” has “position” in it? It may be a coincidence, but recently, I found out that position is more than a part of the word—it’s a part of the process that can make all the difference.

Over the last few months, I’ve been having a dry spell in my composing. Even though I probably composed my usual amount of music last semester, I was beginning to get to a point where composing was just another thing on my homework to-do list. There was no enjoyment—just dread. It all came to a head last week, when I realized how miserable I was when I composed, and I started to wonder if I had lost the abilities and passion I’d had for composition before my album release.